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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin is chairman of the House Budget Committee. Today he announced the GOP “Path to Prosperity.” It is what House Republicans are offering as the budget of the United States for fiscal year 2012.

The budget acknowledges Hauser’s Law, proposing a 20% cap on federal spending rather than the 23% currently being promoted. It proposes welfare and healthcare reforms that acknowledge the motivations behind the choices people make in these programs. It acknowledges the complexity of our current tax law and proposes to simplify it.

Representative Ryan notes in his concluding paragraph in the Wall Street Journal, “We can reform government so that people don’t have to reorient their lives for less.”

Well…

Get ready for the preening of the Democratic Party. This will be a display for the ages!

Republicans have offered a policy proposal, and they will be met with characterizations of them being the worst of the worst. You say you haven’t seen much of the theme, “Republicans are turning the economy into a catastrophe”? Get ready for it. How about, “Republicans are stealing from our Seniors”? That will be front and center as well.

The idea of meeting policy proposals with negative characterizations is time-honored politics.

Let the demagoguery begin.

UPDATE 4/8/2011:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warns that Republicans are at war with women:

"We have a big fight on our hands, in terms of respect for women..."

"This is the same old ideological turn back the clock for women..."

"Women are predominantly the recipients of Medicare, and they are going to be hurt by this."

"There is actually a war on women."

Representative Pelosi's remarks are not quite as strong ("the new civility") as those delivered by Representative Louise Slaughter who believes that newly elected Republicans are "here to kill women." That disquieting theme of the Democratic Party is being used more frequently.